


distant

by Val_Creative



Series: Stranger Things Drabble-Palooza 2019 [22]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Adults, BAMF Eleven | Jane Hopper, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Gay Will Byers, Gen, Good Parent Joyce Byers, Growing Up Together, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Injury Recovery, Living Together, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, Sad Will Byers, Scars, Siblings Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Teenagers, Whump, Will Byers and Eleven | Jane Hopper Are Best Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 09:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20006212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: We have each other.





	distant

**Author's Note:**

> **Further warnings** of conversion therapy in the 1990s. No big details.
> 
> Requested by candy95 (FFN): "Will and El comforting each other after everything that happened. Post S3." I needed more of them being siblings and being there for each other. Please enjoy the feels! Thank you for reading! Any thoughts appreciated!

*

Out at a truck stop, El vanishes near the grassy hill without telling anyone, coming across a lone, deep pond. She seats on a boulder, leaning sideways and dipping her fingertips in. Ripples form around El's hand, mirroring out and thinning.

A twig breaks apart. El jerks her head up, staring at Will approaching. His eyes wet, a glaring red like hers. From all the crying.

"… Does that still hurt?" he asks curiously, peering at El's leg. "All of the scars?"

El shakes her head, gazing down. Her white sock begins sagging down from her ankle to her heel. El's cuffed overalls ride up when she has her knees bent, and reveals the network of pinkened, rigid scars out in the open.

"I got one too," Will admits.

"Really?"

He nods, hiking up his tee-shirt for a moment. A blotchy, maroon patch of scarring near Will's hip-bone. "They were trying to get The Mind Flayer out of me," Will says, his mouth relaxing into a little, forgetful smile. "Nancy burned me with a poker."

El's fingers reach out, brushing featherlight to Will's side. He makes an low, uncomfortable noise, tugging his shirt back down.

"We never really got be friends… after everything that happened…"

"I want to be your friend," El declares.

"I…" Will hesitates. "I told Mike you were a stupid girl," he confesses, grimacing in shame. "I shouldn't have. I was jealous."

"Jealous?"

"I wanted things to go back before everything that happened. I wanted Mike to hang out with me instead of you."

El blinks, her heart sinking. " _Oh_."

"Now we both can't hang out with Mike."

Despite learning this, and feeling hurt by Will's earlier coldness, El holds out her hand to him. Will gives her a baffled expression, but takes El's hand anyway. Their fingers warm and entwining. "We have each other," she reminds him, gently.

*

It'll be the same. Years later.

Joyce will find them in the pond, bobbing in the water and splashing and laughing. They'll have late night movies and popcorn. Will helps El with her math homework. El plays with him on the trampoline, making him bounce higher than physically possible.

There's celebrations and birthdays and graduations under the same roof. They get older.

Will slicks and sweeps his hair back, cutting it different. Strands of Will's bangs hang near his brow-line. El's hair goes from twisting up with butterfly clips and barrettes to falling naturally past her chin and shoulders, stylishly frizzy. The roots dyed golden-brown.

*

It's the same, but _different_.

Isolating himself from his family and friends, Will moves out.

His girlfriend encourages this, but she finds out eventually that Will doesn't like girls. Kind of like how everyone else knows. She tries to have him forcibly committed to a facility for conversion therapy. He's held by staff members for nearly a week before Joyce raises hell with a lawsuit, driving there herself with El.

El waits in the parking lot, catching a glimpse of Will's shocked, paled face, opening her arms when he rushes in.

Will hugs his sister, quivering and crying noiselessly, burying his face into El's blouse. His eyes bright, glaring red. Wet, like El's own eyes. She holds him close, pushing her fingers into Will's hair and cradling his skull, glaring across the lot to Will's ex-girlfriend.

" _El_ …"

"We have each other," El says firmly, before Will can apologize.

He never has to.

El doesn't separate from him, her head pressed insistently to his temple, glaring so murderous that Will's ex-girlfriend hurries to her car, spooked.

They're family. That's all that matters.

*


End file.
